#i think there was one during spider-island when he turned into tarantula? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mma3youf · 3 years

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FA222 ,principles of graphic design:

Instructor: mr.munwar mukhtar

@uob-funoon @mnwrzmn

Project 1 : design

Covering up the Cracks: The Return of Wallpaper

How artists from Édouard Vuillard to Dorothea Tanning and Kehinde Wiley used wallpaper in their work

Forget fragrant roses and honeysuckle. Forget soft-throated songbirds and sunflowers. I always see spiders in wallpaper. My eyes trace the patterns, searching them out, those crooked arachnids. The mere hint of one turns my stomach. Look: there’s one! Tarantula-black, wriggling through that ivy-blossom, crouching behind those camellias. See its distended abdomen, those unwieldy legs?

What this says about me, I don’t want to know, but spiders also spring to mind whenever I think of a certain painting by Édouard Vuillard. Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist (1893) is a most peculiar work, wrought with invisible tensions. The manner in which Vuillard configures his mother and sister hints at a curious dynamic, one more commonly imagined between a spider and a fly. Here is Madame Vuillard, a throbbing black presence, legs set wide apart, hands placed defiantly on her knees in as dominant and sinister a pose as she can muster. To the left, Vuillard’s sister, Marie (or Mimi as she was known within the family), looks as if she is being engulfed by the wallpaper. Or is she already trapped? Can you hear the frantic buzzing as she struggles to escape? It’s almost unbearable. Marie is ensnared; it’s as if Madame Vuillard has forced her into a web. The awkward angle at which Vuillard composes his picture fosters this tension. Somehow, the artist seems to suggest, maman is driving her daughter into dangerous territory.

Or is she? Is Vuillard really attempting to convey that his mother is pushing his sister not only to the limits of physical space, but also of sanity? Although the narrative is not explicit, Vuillard painted several similar portraits of his mother and sister that imply domestic disharmony. In The Door Ajar (1891), for example, Marie appears alone, this time peering into a room as if she wants simultaneously to enter and retreat. Marie’s dress and the wallpaper are barely distinguishable from one another: the maggoty yellow pattern of the latter insidiously overlaps with the strange crescent moons of the former to suggest … what exactly? Is Marie, once again, being pushed in to the web of the wallpaper? Or is something else at play? Could Vuillard be trying to capture some deep-seated predisposition in his sister? Perhaps, psychologically speaking, Marie wants to entwine herself with the background of life. As in Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist, rather than being pushed out of the room by maman, Marie is perhaps choosing to contort her body so as to escape? Whatever the case, for Vuillard, wallpaper is never simply decorative. Loaded with narratives, in the artist’s hands it becomes a metaphor for the divide between physical and psychological space, between inner and outer realities.

A little less than 100 years after Vuillard completed Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist, a young woman on the east coast of America took a series of photographs, ‘Space2, Providence, Rhode Island’ (1976–77), one of which could stand as a companion piece to his painting. An eerie connection exists between the two works, a conversation of sorts across the decades. Here is the image of another young woman who appears to want to escape and who uses wallpaper as the means by which to do so. Unlike Marie, however, who is the subject of her brother’s narrative, the woman in this photograph is most definitely the author of her own disappearance. Using strips of paper to cover her face, breasts and legs, Francesca Woodman attempts to take herself out of the photographs she so carefully constructs. Like wallpaper itself, with its repeating patterns and shapes, the desire to remove herself from the picture occurs throughout Woodman’s work.

In other self-portraits, Woodman crouches beneath a tilted door, disappears through a wall, merges with mirrors, windows and fireplaces. She is a ghost light, a will-’o-the-wisp, a haze and a blur; present only in her absence, a non sequitur made physical. Indeed, looking every bit like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), with her long blonde hair, floor-length skirts and black pumps, Woodman seems desperate to slip beyond the here and now, to use every available surface in order to vanish – not into Wonderland, but towards some other dimension. Ironically, much like the Cheshire Cat whose smile lingers long after the rest of his body has disappeared, by highlighting herself in the act of vanishing, Woodman’s spectral presence grows ever more compelling. Who is this beguiling figure dedicated to both evading and haunting? The answer is never clear. In fact, the nearest we come to it might be the manner of the photographer’s death. In 1981, at the age of 22, Woodman took her own life by jumping out of a window.

Appearance and disappearance. Repeating patterns and shapes. Integration and disintegration. A year before Vuillard completed Interior, Mother and Sister of the Artist, a novel was published in America that foreshadowed it. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes as its subject the agonizing mental decline of an unnamed narrator who has just given birth. Confined by her husband to an upstairs nursery with bars at the window, the woman is advised to empty her mind and do nothing but rest. Instead, she begins to tell us about her predicament. Having been deprived of any mental stimulation, she begins to believe she has seen glimpses of a woman trapped behind the room’s sickly yellow wallpaper. As a metaphor for the morbidly restrictive society into which 19th-century, middle-class women were born, The Yellow Wallpaper is highly effective; on a psychological level, it is unsurpassed. As with the walls in Vuillard’s painting, the paper crawls with meaning; the narrator projects her fears onto its ‘bloated curves and flourishes’, its ‘sprawling flamboyant patterns’ and ‘wallowing seaweeds’ until, finally, they take on a life of their own and begin to seep through the paper in the shape of a deranged ‘other’. The wallpaper, in other words, has become a reproduction of what is playing out in the narrator’s misshapen psyche.

It is hard to think of Gilman’s work without being reminded of that doyen of the 19th-century British arts and crafts movement, William Morris. The intricate wallpapers and textile designs he created for Victorian homes could easily have graced the room in which Gilman’s narrator was incarcerated. This made American artist Kehinde Wiley’s first UK museum solo show, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, at William Morris Gallery in London earlier this year more than a little intriguing. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper is something that has haunted me for years,’ Wiley says of the novella in a short film about the making of this work. ‘The idea of being in a room and not being taken seriously.’ This is not something that can be said of the six black women and two children Wiley met on the streets of east London, whose strikingly beautiful portraits filled the exhibition. Whether sitting or standing, whether their faces turn away or directly look out, each sitter is centre stage. More than that, each is engaged in a serious dialogue with the background patterns from which they emerge. These patterns are based on Morris’s own wallpaper designs that would have papered the walls of mansions inhabited by, among others, former slave-traders and plantation owners. In doing so, Wiley’s work plays on the conflict between the sinister history embedded in the prettiest detailing and the self-possessed women who emerge from the patterns, who seem to defy anyone to repeat it.

Lindsey Mendick, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, 2020, installation detail, Eastside Projects,Birmingham. Courtesy: the artist and Eastside Projects; photograph: Stuart Whipps

Coincidentally, artist and sculptor Lindsey Mendick’s exhibition at Eastside Projects in Birmingham earlier this year was also titled ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. Featuring untitled videos, ceramics and miniatures, the show pivots on a disturbing episode in the artist’s life when, during a nervous breakdown in 2006, Mendick glanced from her bedroom window to see six men dressed in black, walking up and down the street speaking into walkie-talkies. Mendick related the incident to her mother who, given her daughter’s vulnerable state of mind, found the story difficult to believe. A few days later, however, news broke that the former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, had been poisoned; he was Mendick’s neighbour.

Unlike Gilman’s narrator, what Mendick had seen was real; however, in her exhibition she, too, played with the idea of wallpaper as a borderland between sanity and insanity. The show also included other domestic items as receptacles into or onto which all that was unendurable could be projected. A large teapot (with a hole in one side through which you could view the vessel’s interior) contained two small ceramic figures taking tea from a large teapot containing two ceramic figures taking tea from a teapot, in what felt like a claustrophobic dance to the death. Nor did the claustrophobia end there, for all the pieces in the small, over-lit gallery spoke of other confined and confining spaces – from the hollowed-out, ceramic head of Russian President Vladimir Putin, inside which the figure of a distraught woman (Mendick herself?) sits on a toilet within a cramped bathroom, to a 1960s-style bedside cabinet inside which reside Mendick’s family members, configured weirdly as Russian dolls. But, of all the dialogues taking place inside this room, the loudest is also the most hallucinatory: the one inside my own head between Gilman and Mendick. What is it they are saying? That yellow is an unfortunate colour with which to decorate a room? That the divide between sanity and insanity is paper-thin? Or that even the most innocuous of objects can pulsate with the unconscious?

This is a sentiment with which the surrealist artist, sculptor and writer Dorothea Tanning would surely have agreed. Writing in the catalogue for her 1979 exhibition at New York’s Gimpel-Wietzenhoffer Gallery, she declared of her hometown of Galesburg, in rural Illinois, that ‘nothing happened but the wallpaper’. Tanning’s Chambre 202, Hôtel du Pavot (1970–73) is a three-dimensional, life-sized room in which two grubby pink torsos, shaped as if carved from ham, poke through the dingy wallpaper while the chimney breast gives birth to three further mutations – although whether these are animal, vegetable or some other tumorous mash-up, it is impossible to say. The work was partly inspired by a song Tanning recalled from her childhood: ‘In Room 202’ (1919) composed by Dave Harris with lyrics by Edgar Leslie and Bert Kalmar, tells the story of Kitty Kane, a gangster’s moll who poisoned herself while staying at a hotel in Chicago.

In room two hundred and two The walls keep talkin’ to you I’ll never tell you what they said So turn out the light and come to bed.

But if the song suggests talking walls, Tanning pushes this idea to its very edge, wishing to create a space in which the wallpaper, as she once explained, would ‘tear with screams’ while maintaining ‘an odd banality’. The latter is captured by the dreary ordinariness of the installation’s wallpaper while the former is contained in the hotel’s name: pavot is French for poppy, the flower from which opium is derived. By conflating these disparate ideas, Tanning succeeds in heightening the room’s creepiness; this in turn precipitates a sense of impending doom. What springs to mind is a back-street abortionist’s or the lair of a serial killer such as John Christie who, over several months in the early 1950s, murdered (among others) Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina MacLennan, hiding their bodies in a kitchen alcove, which he subsequently wallpapered over as if it were a solid wall. The women’s bodies were only discovered after Christie moved out of the house and his landlord, wanting to redecorate, tapped on what he thought was the rear wall to the kitchen only to discover it was hollow. As Ludovic Kennedy wrote in Ten Rillington Place (1961), the landlord then ‘pulled away a small piece of paper and shone his torch inside. Whatever he expected to see, it could hardly have been what he did see: the naked seated body of Hectorina MacLennan.’ You can almost envisage the landlord stumbling backwards in horror, just as the chambermaid might have done when she pushed open the door to Chambre 202. This is a room that distils much of what the work of Mendick, Vuillard, Wiley and Woodman makes clear: that wallpaper does not so much cover the cracks, as serve to reveal them.

Main image: Lindsey Mendick, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, 2020, installation view, Eastside Projects, Birmingham. Courtesy: the artist and Eastside Projects; photograph: Stuart Whipps

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gingersimasnaps · 4 years

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True Colors (Vera Stone/Hamish Duke)

Title: True colors Word count: 4601 Summary: Vera Stone needs to paint her living room. Hamish Duke is ready to help. fluff&smut; OOC Vera; AU - law office

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„Mr. Duke, don’t you really have better things to do than watching me?“ CEO of Blue Rose Law Office Vera Stone was standing with her back turned to him, reading through some documents she pulled out of a shelf.

Hamish blinked. Was he really that obvious, or did she just… know? Because that was exactly what she was doing. She knew things. She knew that Angus, complete idiot from analytic department, smoked a cigarette on the toilets at the opposite end of the building, even though no smoking was rule number one in the office. She knew who hacked his colleague Nicole’s phone and sent photos of her and her girlfriend to almost everyone, though the evidence didn’t exist, and police IT specialists came empty handed. She knew when some employee wanted to call in sick, hours before the employee even thought about this idea.

„Hmmm… Actually no, I don’t think so,“ answered Hamish. Vera turned to him with rigid expression on her face, but when he smirked, she just rolled her eyes. If it was someone else, she would probably just wipe them out of the face of the Earth. It was more than obvious she had a soft spot for Hamish.

Blue Rose Law Office was well known across the whole city of Belgrave. For its quality too, of course, but mainly for the fact it was almost hermetically closed for ordinary people. Unless you were a spoiled descendant of some high-ranking snob, you didn't have a chance to get into the Blue Rose. But about a year and a half ago, it was discovered that CEO Edward Coventry, who was also high seated in the city council, was tunneling Blue Rose for his own enrichment. He had been doing so systematically and successfully for several years, with the help of influential clients who owed him for saving them from justice. After the truth came out, he was removed from management. No one was too surprised when he ran away. It has been speculated that he‘s been hiding on his private island Vade Maecum in the southern Caribbean.

Vera was selected to be the new head of the office. It was a logical step. Surprisingly, as the newest member of the Gnostic council (seriously, this company was so snobbish, that their managing board was named Gnostic, and even people had their rankings – Hamish was currently a Magistratus, which was pretty high for a newcomer), she exposed Coventry's unfair practices and helped to break his entire plan. Her promotion was the reward. And simply because she was Vera Stone, she drastically changed established practices. She hired a whole bunch of young, relatively ordinary people to join the company. Some left after a shorter or longer time, but otherwise it turned out that Vera really knew where to reach - most of the new staff had proven to be very capable and useful to the office. Everyone got an assigned person, something like a tutor. Hamish had no idea how he ended up under the leadership of Vera Stone herself, but although his friends from the office either teased him mercilessly about that or pitied him, he was happy with the outcome. He had always been able to appreciate a strong person in leadership. And Vera was definitely such a person.

They’d been working together for a little over a year, during which time they built a working relationship based on trust in each other's decisions, on the fact that they both excelled in something different and complemented each other perfectly, on the long nights they spent over documents and contracts… And also on the tension that was between them. Not hostile, definitely not. He had once thought it came from Vera's reluctance, or perhaps outright inability to trust anyone, but now, for some time now, he had been sure that what was literally sparkling the air between them was a mutual attraction that the two were trying to fiercely suppress. But it was precisely these moments - when Hamish made some cheeky remark and she didn‘t kill him for it - that proved that they may not be as strong as they seem at first glance.

"Okay," Vera sighed, snapping the file closed and putting it back in its place. "I think we should call it a night. It's late, and I have work tomorrow. "

"Here?" Hamish asked, and dug his heels on the ground to pull his body into a slightly more upright position. He sat in a comfortable office chair, and during the evening he had made himself even more comfortable by sliding down.

"No," the blackhaired woman replied, walking back in her awfully high heels to the table where she sat on her own chair. "I need to paint the living room. I have a day off tomorrow for the first time in ages, so it‘s the right time. "

"Paint? Will you paint — like by yourself? ”Hamish said this before he could stop himself, and this time Vera really gave him a hard look.

"There's something surprising about that, Mr. Duke? ”

"Of course not," Hamish replied. "I was just wondering if you wouldn‘t want to… help."

And here it was again. He really meant it as just an offer of help, but for some reason it sounded like he was offering her help with something completely different. Vera looked at him.

"Hm," she said, resting her chin on her index finger, "it's true that I could probably appreciate a… man's hand." He didn‘t believe she wasn't flirting with him now. He leaned in a little.

"So what time?" God, it really sounded like they were arranging some secret rendezvous at a hotel.

"Eight o‘clock," Vera replied. "Sharp." She got up, picked up her purse, and headed for the door.

"Are you going to spend the night in my office?" She asked him as she had her coat draped over her arm, and Hamish still showed no signs of getting up.

"Not today," he told her, as if he intended to any other night. She rolled her eyes at him again and let him pass so she could lock her office. Together they went to the underground garages. There was silence on the elevator ride, and Hamish wondered what she was thinking about.

"Good night, Grand Magus," he told her as she unlocked her car and was about to get in it. The Grand Magus was a nickname given to her by one of the newcomers. Hamish would bet anything it was his friend Randall. Of course, the nickname reached her, but probably no one had dared to use it right in front of her yet.

Vera narrowed her eyes and gave him a slightly ironic smile. "I hope you haven't forgotten what I said. Sharp. ”She got into her luxury SUV and started the car. Hamish smiled and opened the door to his car. Vera was already leaving when he took off. He noticed that she was watching him in the rearview mirror. The prospect of painting had never been more interesting, he thought, and he also drove home to get a good night's sleep before tomorrow's work.

The next morning, at exactly eight o'clock, he rang the bell at Vera's house. When she opened the door for him, he was quite surprised. He only knew her as the leading person of the office in her ‚CEO's uniform‘, which included a dress or nice costume, and high heels. But now she stood before him barefoot, in leggings and a plain white T-shirt, her hair tied in a messy knot.

"Did you swallow your tongue along with your breakfast?" Vera asked, pulling him out of his contemplation of her outfit.

"No," he replied. "But when someone needs to start painting at eight in the morning, even if they have the whole day off, they have to count with the fact that not everyone is a morning bird." Vera rolled her eyes at him again – that was slowly becoming their sign - and let him go inside. Hamish took off his shoes and coat and handed her a box. She looked at him questioningly.

"Those are doughnuts. No tarantula is going out of it, ”he grinned, watching in astonishment as Vera shuddered with disgust.

"Don't talk about spiders in front of me. Never."

“Arachnophobia? I wouldn't tip you on that. ”He followed her into the living room, which was connected to the kitchen. "I wouldn't tip you on orange, either," he added when he saw the kitchen walls.

"It's apricot," she corrected him immediately. "Did you come to solve my phobias or paint?"

"Depends on the situation," Hamish replied nonchalantly. He went to the living area. Vera had already managed to cover the floor with plastic and move all the things that weren’t too heavy for her to be picked up by herself. Together with Hamish, they set out to push the heavy, massive furniture away from the walls to access them.

"Really, is such furniture necessary at all?" Hamish snorted. "If you don't want it to fall apart after five days of use, it is," Vera snapped, almost out of breath. Fortunately, they had the last chest of drawers left. Hamish went to her to take down the photos of her. There were two. In one was Vera with some young, redhead girl. They seemed to be related. He had probably never seen his boss laughing so cheerfully as in the picture.

"That's my niece," Vera said, suddenly appearing beside him. "Laura."

"I didn't know you have a niece."

"That’s pretty logical," she told him. "Theoretically, you shouldn’t be bothered with my personal life, especially considering that most employees think I don't even have any, but if you're already holding the photo…" she shrugged.

"Are you close?" Hamish asked. "And I don't think you don‘t have a personal life."

"Um, I suppose yes, we are. She lived here with me for a few years, but then she decided to attend Yale and moved there." Hamish decided not to ask why Laura didn't live with her parents.

"What is she studying?"

"Law." It was Vera who grinned now for a change, and Hamish chuckled.

"Runs in the family, apparently."

"Yeah, sort of."

He set the frame behind him in the prepared box, and took another, a little smaller, in his hand. "Is this Laura, too?" He asked another question, showing the photo to Vera. He saw her features stiffen.

"No. Katharine. My daughter, " she replied in a tone that made it clear she would not answer the next question about the baby in the picture, and snatched it from his hand. Hamish understood, of course, but that didn't mean it didn't ignite his curiosity. He didn't need to extract evidently painful memories from her. But he wanted to get to know Vera. Not CEO Stone, but Vera. The woman who painted the walls herself, had a niece studying law at Yale and who had just played a music CD from ABBA.

"Can we get started?" She threw a paint roller at him.

"Sure, Magus. What color? ”

"White first, to make the color brighter. Then red. "

"I didn't expect anything else." After half an hour of painting, he realized that Vera was humming in a low voice along with the CD. He stopped and listened. His parents insisted on a music education, so as a child he was attending piano classes. He had never felt any great love for it, but right now he wished he could play the piano along with her singing, which sounded very good. Voulez-vous song ended, and – of course - Does Your Mother Know came next. Hamish began to hum, too. As soon as Vera heard that, she raised her voice a little. You're not gonna win this one, the blonde thought, and also added to the volume. Before long, they both sang as if they were at a concert, while the original tape of ABBA was barely audible. When the song ended, the two laughed. More, Hamish thought again. More of this sweet laughter.

After the white paint dried, they dug their rollers into the red color, but halfway through the walls, Vera let out a huff.

"That looks awful," she said, expressing the thought Hamish had had in his head from the beginning.

"I agree," he nodded. "We need to repaint it white again."

"Are you sure?"

"It can't get any worse."

"Cheeky," she told him with a smirk. As it was almost 4PM, they decided to take a break, and eat the dougnuts-not-tarantulas he brought. Then they went to work again.

Taking advantage of Vera's good mood, Hamish decided to tease her. He grabbed a brush, dipped it in paint, crept up behind her, and ran it over her nose during her unguarded moment.

"HEY!" Vera shouted, turning sharply to see Hamish's perfectly satisfied expression. "You’re so gonna pay for this,“ she growled with a sly smile, turning her back on him.

"I want to see that," he replied, turning back to his part of wall. He was alert, but probably not enough. At one point he bent down to dip the roller in the paint - and at that moment Vera's hand, soaked in white paint they were using, landed on his black T-shirt.

He looked at her, and suddenly an immense desire to kiss the triumphant grin on her face seized him. But then something better occurred to him. He grabbed her in his arms, making her yelp in surprise, and in one smooth motion he pressed her against the freshly painted wall. „So who won?“ he said, face centimeters from hers. It looked like she would want to fight and get out of his grip, so he pushed his knee inbetween her legs, to hold her in place. Vera gasped.

„This is not a… game, Mr. Duke,“ she said under her breath.

„Oh yeah? I had a feeling we could be a little playful since it’s our free day.“ Hamish let go one of her hips, only to pull the rubber band out of her vantablack hair, to let them fall freely all over the white, wet wall. His palm brushed a few strands out of her face, and when he shifted a little, his knee rubbed against Vera’s leggins, close to her center. Vera almost closed her eyes and arched against him a little, and that was all he needed.

He kissed her so heatedly and passionately, that he earned another whimper from her. Vera wounded her arms around his neck and when he pulled his leg from between her legs and gripped her butt instead, she wrapped her legs around him. Hamish finally detached her from the wall and backed off to where he suspected the couch was. Vera took his bottom lip between her teeth. His strong hands on her ass were driving her mad. She was coming home aroused almost regularly since they started working together, and first thing she would do when she got back to her house was to touch herself. Hamish and his damned smile, kind eyes, and the oh so intoxicating smell… She always ended up imagining it was his hand carresing her down there. And now, it was going to be finally, finally, finally true.

The blonde guy eventually opted to lay her on the fluffy white rug, not the couch, not letting go of her lips for one second. Vera closed her eyes when those lips touched that sensitive spot on her neck for the first time, and a soft moan escaped her. She tangled her hand in his hair and arched her back again a little. When she opened her eyes again, Hamish’s t-shirt was gone, and she had no idea how he did it. She forgot about it though, as soon as his hands gripped the hem of her own t-shirt, and took it off, along with her sport bra.

"So beautiful," whispered Hamish, his breath hot against her skin, and it sent a wave of arousal all the way down to her already wet slit.

„Gosh,“ she panted, when Hamish took one of her nipples into his mouth, and began sucking on it. Hamish smiled at her cunningly, and gently bit the nipple. Vera felt small pain, immediately soothed out by his tongue, and if she ever experienced heaven, it was right now. She heard some sounds of pleasure, and realized it was her own voice. God, what was this man doing to her… He could be literally just casually standing somewhere, wearing his smile, and she would consider it a turn on. But the only thing standing now was his cock, which was visible through his pants. Vera wanted to reach down and palm his bulge, but right just as she was raising her hand, Hamish decided to lick her stomach all the way down, right to the waist of her leggins.

"Oh God!" Vera dug her nails into his shoulders, feeling everything inside her twist with desire. Hamish bit the skin on her belly, and then, very impatiently, just ripped her pants and panties away.

"I should probably require a compensation for this," Vera panted. Hamish’s face appeared abover hers.

"Shut up, Magus," he growled, and kissed her so deeply that her brain just stopped for a while. Her hands were working on their own, clawing his back and leaving long red marks on it, soothing it right after with tender palm caresses. His kiss didn’t last long, though, and before she even tried to make her brain work, she felt Hamish’s tongue circling her pussy, but not touching her where she wanted him the most.

When the almost painful pleasure became too much for her to bear and Vera was literally trembilng with desire, she was torn between loving him and wanting to kill him.

"Hamish, please, please, stop teasing me," she almost sobbed, and in the way his lips moved upward against her sensitive flesh, she understood this was what he wanted her to do the whole time. The tip of his tongue touched her clit and she jerked her hips to him. He was unbelievable. Unbelievably goo-

"Jesus fuck!" Vera cried out loud, when Hamish put his whole mouth on her pussy and his tongue began attacking her swollen clit. She was dripping wet, good God, he was making her wetter than she ever been in her whole life - and she had had some good sex before.

She held his head close to her center with her thighs, almost as if afraid he will pull back, and leave her alone with this unbearable desire. But Hamish had no intentions to do so. Her mound had the most intoxicating smell, and it felt like silk, hot silk, and tasting her was already his favorite thing to do.

Vera bucked her hips to him, being so painfully, breathtakingly close… And then Hamish slid two of his fingers into her, curled them slightly, and started fucking her, excrutiatingly slowly. When he sucked her whole clit into his mouth and thrusted his fingers‘ full length into her, it sent her over the edge. She cried out with pure exctasy, eyes closed, back arched, ankles crossed behind his back, wishing for this feeling to never end.

Hamish was kissing his way back up, and when he captured Vera’s mouth once again, she could taste herself in his honey-like kisses, and it felt better than any other thing she had ever tasted. He slipped one arm under her back and then spun them around abruptly. Vera let out a surprised yelp, because she was suddenly sitting on him, and Hamish had to steady her by holding her hips.

"Easy, lady," he smiled. Vera felt like she could fly, but he was still so hard against her right thigh, and she thought it would be fair to give him release too. Who cares about painting, after all.

She kneeled beside him and took his pants down. At first, she only caressed him through his boxers - Calvin Klein, apparently he had some style - but he tried to prey her hand off.

"You don't have to-"

She cut him off with a finger on his lips. "I want to. And you definitely don't want to open a dispute with your boss.” With that, she pulled his underwear down, and took him in her soft, warm hand. Hamish supressed a moan. This woman is really one of a kind, he thought, when her hand moved up and down on his cock. When she bent her head down and took him in her deliciously hot mouth, teasing the tip of him with her tongue, another moan worked its way out of him. Even the plain sight of her head between his legs was almost too much, and her mouth felt so good and right… It didn’t took her more than a few minutes to make him come. The last thing he did before his seed spurted was to pull her back. For some reason he didn’t feel comfortable by the image of Vera swallowing his sperm - she was too precious for such thing.

They both needed a while to steady their breaths. Two piles of their clothes laid around them and half red, half white walls were waiting for them, but the two couldn’t care less. Hamish was first to stand up, and he pulled Vera with him, only to take her into his arms again. Vera wrapped her legs around his waist again, but this time, she took his face in her hands, and kissed him. Her long hair blocked him the view, so after a few steps, he stubbed his toe and fell forward. Fortunately, it was her couch. Vera squeaked, when her back hit the pillows, and he fell face first on her chest. She started laughing.

"Oh my God, this is like D grade category movie," she said between giggles. Hamish couldn’t help himself, and joined her in the laughter. He kissed the vale between her breasts.

"I think we need a shower."

“Definitely. We don't want to be sticky, “ Vera nodded. "Come." She got up from the couch, took his hand, and led him upstairs, to her big bathroom with an enormous bathtub.

„Of course,“ Hamish muttered with amusement. "Wouldn't expect anything less."

"Well, I like my comfort," she shrugged, and bent over the rim of the tub to turn the water on. Hamish felt himself twitch again at the sight of her beautifully shaped ass. Again, he couldn't help himself. He let his fingers travel lightly along her spine and over her butt. Then he lifted her and put her into the tub.

"Impatient, are we?" Said Vera with the tiniest of smiles.

"You are the one who will be profitting from it," Hamish answered, and pushed her to the corner of the tub, where she could sit. She watched him, intrigued. The man kneeled in the water, and pulled her legs apart. Vera felt her breath quickening already, and when he attacked her mound with his tongue and fingers again, she literally saw stars. If she expected something from their… painting job today, it was quick sex, at most. But of course, this was Hamish Duke, the most extraordinary man she ever met in her whole life. She should've known it won’t be just fucking. Not now, not ever.

Soon, her moans and grunts and "there, yes, like that, yes," filled the bathroom. After a while, when she was already close, Hamish's mouth left her pussy, and she felt a flash of anger, but then he brought their foreheads together and instead of his tongue, he pressed his thumb against her clit - and it gifted her with another orgasm, way more bigger than the first one. He didn't stop, though, and another huge wave soon ripped through her.

Hamish was watching her as she was slowly coming from heights back to him, and wondered if he would ever get enough of this sight. His boss‘ cheeks were tinted from the arousal, blue eyes were staring nowhere, and her legs were slightly shaking. God, he wanted to be inside her so badly… He quickly pulled her down to him, as she was still supple, leaned her against hir chest, and soaped her body.

Vera let him to do to whatever he wanted to her. She felt like she was under some spell. Maybe he was some kind of a magic practitioner, because she never felt like this around any man. But again, Hamish was different than all the men she met. So when he rinsed the soap from her, pulled her out of the tub and wrapped her in a bathrobe, she found his face with her hands.

"I want you," she whispered, lips pressed against his ear. And Hamish, being Hamish, bowed a little. For some reason, it turned her on even more than she already was, because who wouldn’t be after three amazing orgasms? They went to her bedroom together.

This time, both of them wanted it to be slow. Hamish was covering her whole body with kisses, Vera was caressing his torso. "Now," she whispered after a few minutes, or maybe hours?, but he already knew. Slowly, tenderly, his slid his member into her wet, silky, hot entrance, stayed still for a while, and then they moved simultaneously. Like they were made for each other, no matter how much it sounded like a cliché.

Even though Vera had never believed in such staged movie bullshit, they found their release together. When her walls started clenching around him a little, Hamish took one of her insanely long legs, and put it on his shoulder, so he could go deeper. Vera threw her head back, and in the very moment when her fourth orgasm of the day hit her and she came with his name on her lips, she felt Hamish spill himself deep into her, whispering "Vera“ several times over.

Hamish slid out from her, fell on his back, and Vera laid her head on his shoulder. She was completely worn out and her core and thighs ached, but it was the most beautiful kind of pain.

“Am I good? Painter? ”Hamish asked, still little out of breath, and Vera couldn’t supress a giggle.

"The best," she answered, and placed a tiny kiss on his chin. "We both are. We should quit being advocates and start a painting company. "

"Speaking of being advocates, how am I supposed to work with you now? Not happening. "

"Well, I can always shift you to someone else."

Hamish dragged his nails down her arm. "Also not happening."

"Thought so," Vera smirked. "I have to clean up the mess downstairs," she sighed after a while.

“Let it be for now. I will come tomorrow to help, “offered Hamish. Vera propped herself on one elbow and stared at his face.

"What?" He asked, clearly confused. "Did I say something wrong?"

Vera slowly shook her head. "No. I just… Stay the night." She didn’t exactly believe herself, because she never let anyone stay with her, no matter if it was after fucking or not. But when Hamish’s smile grew wider, she knew she made the right choice.

"As you wish, Grand Magus,“ he said, laughed when she again rolled eyes on him, and sat up, but just to pull the blanket over them. Vera hesitated for a heartbeat, but then just decided to give up and snuggled against him. Hamish dropped a kiss on her hair and protectively put his arm around her stomach.

It was the first night in ages without a single nightmare for her.

#fanfiction #vera stone #hamish duke #vera/hamish #vermish #theorder #alternateuniverse #smut #fluff #OOC #I really don't know how to write a proper fanfic in English

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dellebecque · 6 years

Note

17. Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. All things change, and we change with them.

Behind a cut because this got really long. You need to read this piece first: Unfading Memory.

Ambition

He thinks he is nineteen, but he is twenty. He carries a pot of brilliant red flowers in and puts it down near the overstuffed chairs his mothers sent. He steps back, staring down at it for a moment, then nudges it slightly with his foot. Two ilms to the side, and somehow the whole room feels different. His room. There isn’t enough green and growing in Ul’dah, and if he’s going to live here he wants to bring a piece of home with him.

He does not understand yet that he has brought nothing with him, that he is sculpting something new from memory.

He is twenty. It is the brief span of months where his real age aligns with the age he thinks he is, because he left home too young to know his own nameday. Once more he glances down at the scrap of paper in his hand, then up at the address. It’s snowing, but he hardly notices the cold any more. It’s part of him, as this place is part of him, as it was from birth.

He knocks, and he waits, the threshold before him the edge of the cliff upon which sits his entire world. Beyond it, an abyss. The unknown. A revelation in blood.

The wizened old seeker who opens the door is a shock, though she shouldn’t be. She stares over the top of her half moon glasses, ears perked forward, her hair thin and gray. Her jaw works for a moment in a painfully familiar expression. “Lior?” Her voice is weak, astonished and uncertain.

“No,” he has to pause and swallow his doubt before he can continue, “Aden.”

“Aden?” Her ears shift upward, her eyes widen, a light in them like the first ray of dawn. “Aden! Oh, oh my boy, my boy’s boy–” She totters out and wraps her arms around him, tears already spilling down the fine lines of her face. He returns her embrace, and thinks she feels in his arms how he always thought a grandmother would.

He hauls himself from the stone, the great split down the back of his armor exposing the wreck of his flesh beneath to the frigid air. It burns in his lungs, it burns on his skin, and he thinks he feels the blood pulsing out begin to slow–from loss of pressure or from cold he isn’t sure.

The dragon before them thrashes as it throws someone, neck peppered with arrows, legs maimed by a dozen slashes, and yet it lumbers forward, all their efforts thusfar merely slowing it. He sees a split second before it happens, in the way the dragon cocks its head, in the way the flesh of its throat bellows, that it is about to breathe. “Aden!”

Flynt doesn’t need to tell him that he will not get a better opportunity. Roger raises his shield in time, but the heat is still immense. For Aden, in that instant there is no cold, there is no heat, there is no pain, only the sublime combination of sensations that make up a jump: the satisfying burn of his muscles pushed to the very limits of what a mortal body can tolerate; that weightless feeling at the height of the jump, the sense of peace in it; and the brutality of impact, the visceral feeling of dragonscale giving way beneath his momentum. The spearhead feels as though it clicks into place, as if this is where it was made to fit, in between two vertebrae at the base of the dragon’s neck. The stream of fire cuts off as an ear-splitting roar of agony rips itself out of the dragon’s throat, and he pushes until blood and a thick, clear fluid gush from the wound, and the roar abruptly stops.

He is twenty one when he rests against a crumbling stone wall, afloat on an island in an endless sky. A great wyvern is curled nearby, her head resting atop a tumbled masonry block, while her youngest brother babbles on in dragonspeak. He only catches a few words, snatches and bits he’s learned–”…practice…I must best our knight!”

“You have a long way to go,” Aden says, not looking up from the plant he is carefully sketching. The chief surveyor will want as much information about its native habitat as possible before he removes it as a sample.

“I can do a hundred more flips than you!” the child seethes–because he is a child. He does one mid-air to demonstrate.

“But only while flying,” Aden counters.

“Flying is better! Your jumping is tedious and tiresome!”

“To you, perhaps. But I could do it all day.”

The child makes a frustrated noise, and the wyvern gives a great huff of a laugh, a little roil of smoke escaping her snout. “You’ll call it tiresome,” she says, “and still you’ll beg one of us to carry you when your wings grow tired, trying to prove you’re more maneuverable.”

Finally Aden glances up, and trades a knowing look with the wyvern as her brother begins his tantrum anew. He wonders briefly what his commanding officer would think if they saw him out here. What Flynt would think, and what Aden would say to him.

Perhaps Flynt would understand, given the nature of his assignment here. Not the one from the knights dragoon, but the one Flynt himself issued–discover what it means to be a dragoon without a war.

He turns the scrap of leather over in his hands, worrying at the edges idly. It’s perhaps three fingers in width, a handspan long, torn on both ends. He remembers, and he thinks, for a long moment, that he should have trusted himself. He should have expected what eventually came.

It feels distant now, even though it’s hardly a handful of moons past. It all seems less real by the day, and yet he wouldn’t trade it.

He shoves the piece of leather into the box, a physical reminder of family he never really had, with other odds and ends before closing it up. His tarantula’s terrarium balances perfectly on top of it, and he carries them out stacked, the little spider inside bracing itself in the tipped over mug that serves as a burrow.

As he stands on the walls of Castrum Oriens, it strikes him that moons ago he would’ve balked at being given any sort of command. He’d done it during the end of the Dragonsong War, but that seemed different, somehow; once his fellow Ishgardians got over the shock of his race they seemed to understand that their not-quite-a-dragoon was pressed into service just as uncertainly and sorely needed as they were. Now he waits for three soldiers, a small enough squadron for reconnaissance, so chosen to lead them in part because of his work during and after the war, in part because of his very brief stint in the Adders.

Aden barely contains the urge to gawp when Ves arrives, manages because of the man in Maelstrom red, a seeker like himself with a massive axe slung across his back, and the hyur in Flames blues adjusting her glasses, trailing behind him.

“You’re…” The seeker trails off, looking him up and down with a cocked brow and a disbelieving tone in his voice, “..the Ishgardian?” Aden knows the man’s eyes follow the length of his spear, and he suspects the questions implied. The tip of his tail curls upward, and his ears flatten almost imperceptibly. The others don’t notice it, but the seeker certainly does from the way his eyes narrow and the twitching of his own tail stills.

“I am.” He pauses to let that statement hang between them just a split second, then continues. “Ser Dellebecque. It’s a mouthful in an emergency, so Aden will suffice while we’re in the field.”

Moons later he is sitting on a cliff looking out over a sea of grass, three maps laid out before him, trying to reconcile them with what he sees before him and the partially blank piece of paper in front of him. He didn’t start this any good at drawing, but maps are something different, and he’s cultivated the surprisingly necessary skill over the past couple of years. Wind kicks up and rustles the grass below him, waves as great as an ocean, the susurrus audible from his perch. It catches his eye, and he looks up from the maps and down at the grass, out to the distant horizon.

Laughter wells up out of him, bright and full-throated, not the quiet chuff or scoff he lets loose in public. Real laughter, like he hasn’t allowed himself in years, totally involuntary. It’s as if a switch has flipped inside of him as the past year comes rushing back. He has no mind for what he’s lost, only what he’s gained.

Aden realizes he is living out all of his impossible dreams, even the ones he never intended, and that in the profound silence of this vast plain he is alone but not lonely. He no longer needs direction, he knows exactly where he is and where he’s going.

He watches the grass for a long time, mind drifting, before he goes back to his maps with a smile.

#Aden Dellebecque #what the fuck is tense #I might be a little drunk #he's out on the Azim Steppe now #he'll be back in Eorzea in another month or so but if anyone wants to catch him out there hit me up #moonhartsffxiv #writing

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komicoshea · 6 years

Text

General rule of comics is that if a character has a clone (or clones in the case of Spidey), one of them usually turns out to be evil. At least until they prove themselves a hero. Introduced in Web of Spider-Man #119 (1994) by Terry Kavanagh and Steven Butler, Kaine was the first of Peter Parker’s clone to be created by Jackal. However, since Jackal hadn’t perfected the clone process, Kaine had developed a skin degeneration, which caused him to become deformed and mentally unstable. Instead of killing him, Jackal abandoned him. Kaine blamed Peter for his existence but thought that Ben was the real Peter Parker. So while Ben traveled the country after originally fighting Peter, Kaine followed him and began attacking Ben. He also began protecting Peter as he believed that he was the same as him (a clone) and attack many of Spidey’s enemies.

He was eventually sent to prison after he confessed to a crime that Peter got blamed for. He eventually escaped and started working with Jackal in order to find a cure for him. However, he sacrificed his life to save Peter but the Jackal held him in a recovery pod. After Ben became Spider-man, Kaine made peace with him and eventually handed himself into the authority. He eventually escaped and tried to kill Norman Osborn. After teaming up with the villain Raptor, who blamed Peter for the death of his family, he was attacked by Kraven’s children but tried to escape to warn Peter. He eventually allowed himself to be captured by the Kravenoff who sacrificed his life in order to bring back their father’s life.

Kaine then resurrected by Jackal but transformed into a Spider-like man known as Tarantula during the Spider-Island arc. When he was sent to stop Horizon Lab from creating a cure, he was cure of the Spider-disease and his skin degeneration. After that arc, he took one of Spider-man’s suit and traveled Houston, Texas where he reluctantly became the city’s hero, dubbed by the media as Scarlet Spider, something he hated. He eventually accepted the Other’s offer and joined up with the New Warriors. It was during this time that, Daemos of the Inheritor attacked the team in order to get Kaine but he was rescued by the Spider warrior and joined up with a alternate Ben Reilly and Ultimate Spider-woman, where they discovered that the Inheritor were clones. When Ben was killed, he transformed into a man-spider and attacked the Inheritors home world where he was killed by Morlun. After the Spider-verse, he was revived and became a secret agent of the Weaver where they discovered that a number of worlds had been affected by a zombie like Carrion disease. He teamed up with Spider-Gwen and they helped stop an insane Ben Reilly, who he later began hunting down. He has since forgave Ben and allowed him to continue as Scarlet Spider.

Unlike Ben, Kaine was never really a popular character until he became the Scarlet Spider. Since then he has had a number of his Scarlet Spider version done in figure form. He had one in the Rocket Raccoon wave but that was done on an outdated buck. He later got a MU figure. He is getting an updated figure in the upcoming SP//DR.

Made:

Spider-man Suit

Recommend Figure: Hasbro Marvel Legends Hobgoblin wave – Classic Spider-man (AKA the pizza eating Spidey) OR Marvel Legends Vintage wave 1 Spider-man

Background:

Just like Ben, Kaine has worn Peter’s classic costume on more then one occasions. One such occasion was when he tricked the Kravenoffs into thinking he was really Peter and killed him in order to resurrect their father. He alter worn it after he was cure of the Spider disease and Peter had to trick his friend into thinking Kaine was Spider-man

Why you need it for your collection?:

Just like Ben or any other character, I wouldn’t recommend getting this for Kaine but instead for Peter.

Does it need a remake?:

No. No. A thousand times no. Spider-man has had this costume done so many times it’s ridiculous.

Stealth Suit

Recommend Figure: Hasbro Marvel Legends Armin Zola wave – Big-Time Spider-man

Background:

After being resurrected and helping to defeat the Queen, Ben took one of Peter’s stealth and tried to began a new life in Mexico. Because of the suit function to change into a new design, it was eventually transformed into his Scarlet Spider suit but would be used occasionally, like when he tried to sneak into the X-mansion to killed Wolverine.

Why you need it for your collection?:

There is a reason that ShartimusPrime refers to this as the big let down Spider-man. The paint app on this figure is bad and is on an outdated build. Only get this for your Spider-man wardrobe but other then that it can be skipped.

Does it need a remake?:

Yes. Really needs a new figure on the Pizza Spidey buck.

Scarlet Spider

Recommend Figure: Hasbro Marvel Legends Spider-man SP//DR wave – Scarlet Spider

Background:

This is actually the exact same suit as the Stealth Suit, which had the function of changing it’s design to whatever the user was thinking. Kaine used it reluctantly to save some people in Houston while he was trying to get to Mexico. The media dubbed him Scarlet Spider, which he hated because that was Ben’s name.

Why you need it for your collection?:

While Hasbro already released this figure, it is now a really bad figure. The upcoming figure is a brand new buck and will come with some nice accessories, like the Other stingers. This is a figure to Spidey fan and New Warrior member but is an absolute most for a Spider-verse display.

Does it need a remake?:

No.

Needs

Below is a gallery of costumes that still need to be made. Click on the image to see chances of it being made. Please note that this is my personal opinion and not fact. If I missed anything, please let me know in the comments below.

Extremely high (has been asked for for a long time)

No Chance

Possible (Possible BAF)

Low Chance

Alternate Universe:

SPIDER-MAN (PETER PARKER, MARVEL PRIME) | SCARLET SPIDER / SPIDER-MAN / JACKAL (BEN REILLY, MARVEL PRIME) | SPIDER-WOMAN (JESSICA DREW, MARVEL PRIME) | SPIDER-GIRL / SPIDER-WOMAN (MAY “MAYDAY” PARKER, MC2 UNIVERSE) | SPIDER-MAN 2099 (MIGUEL O’HARA, 2099 UNIVERSE) | SPIDER-MAN NOIR (PETER PARKER, NOIR UNIVERSE) | SPIDER-PUNK (HOBIE BROWN, EARTH-138) | SPIDER-MAN (PETER PARKER, MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE) | Spider-man (Peter Parker, House of M Universe)

Peter's more brutal brother is here! Kaine's NCS is up. General rule of comics is that if a character has a clone (or clones in the case of Spidey), one of them usually turns out to be evil.

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